Archive for April, 2012

Social Security (SS) and Medicare have unfunded liabilities of approximately $40 trillion dollars. In other words, if we are to make good on Social Security and Medicare promises while keeping tax rates at their current levels, we now should have amassed a $40 trillion trust account. Since this did not occur, major tax rate…Read More »

Just in case you missed it this past weekend, it has now been officially three years since the U.S. Senate acted to pass a budget for the United States federal government! The Daily Caller’s Caroline May reports on the momentous occasion: Thomas Jefferson is widely credited with coining an adage that makes fools of…Read More »

We were among the first to report that President Obama’s proposed budget would break the debt deal reached in the U.S. Congress last summer. Today, although the President’s proposed budget is officially dead, the leadership of the majority Democratic party in the U.S. Senate according to Powerlineblog is taking steps to make breaking that…Read More »

Here is an apparently common scene today from the U.S. Senate’s first session to attempt to mark up a budget for the first time in almost three years (we’re nearly a week away from the official anniversary of the last time the Democratic Party-controlled body acted to do so, as they are required to…Read More »

The Wall Street Journal reports: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta defended his government-plane trips to his California home Monday, but said he regretted the cost to taxpayers—about $870,000—at a time when the Pentagon faces billions of dollars in spending cuts. “I regret that it does … add costs that the taxpayer has to pick up,”…Read More »

What happens when the federal government’s bureaucrats, such as those of the General Services Administration, don’t have any effective oversight in the executive branch when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars? Well, rather than us tell you, let’s have the reporters of the Washington Post describe the agency’s Inspector General’s findings of fiscal malfeasance,…Read More »

CNS News reports: The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045 billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009. It must be easy to spend this kind of…Read More »

If the United States were make a real effort to run a budget surplus for the sake of cutting its national debt burden in half by the year 2050, how big would those budget surpluses have to be? The Economist answers the question for the U.S. and 25 other nations in chart form: The…Read More »

Do you ever feel like you need a scorecard to keep track of all the various spending proposals being put forward for the U.S. federal government’s budget? If so, you’re in luck! The Mercatus Center has put together the following chart that you can use as a scorecard to see how well each of…Read More »

In “Bad Rap: Video Spoof Amplifies Agency Ill” (Wall Street Journal), Peter Landers reports that in a rap video produced by a Government Service Agency (GSA) employee, he fantasizes about being a GSA Commissioner and spending lavish amounts of taxpayers’ dollars with no accountability. For the video, he won a GSA contest, which was…Read More »